Putin's state of mind

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The reasons behind Russian President Vladimir Putin's increasingly hostile attitude toward the Bush administration are becoming clearer. To understand them in their proper context, imagine the United States and its allies had lost the Cold War. NATO has collapsed.

Next thing we know capitalism collapses, along with America's two political parties. In their place springs a one-party system, known as USA, which now stands for United Socialists of America.

As we lick our military, diplomatic and psychological wounds, Canada and Mexico follow our former European allies into the Warsaw Pact. France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Spain and the Benelux countries join COMECON, the Warsaw Pact equivalent of the now defunct European Economic Community. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) folds and is replaced by INTER-ARTA (Inter-American Regulated Trade Association). Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Venezuela become charter members.

The Soviet leader -- Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin or Mr. Putin -- then embarks on a triumphant tour of the former NATO capitals, including Ottawa and Mexico City, now full-fledged Warsaw Pact allies.

Soviet hubris has led the world's most powerful nation to punish a recalcitrant dictator in the Middle East, say, Iraq. The men in the Kremlin decide to invade Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein, roping in key satellites in a coalition of the unwilling. Oblivious to local tribal and sectarian forces, Soviet and coalition forces find themselves bogged down in another Afghanistan.

When the Soviet leader first met with his new counterpart in the White House, he stared into his soul and liked what he saw: an American socialist who could be trusted. But now that the Russian imperialist was bogged down in Iraq, the USA president was beginning to enjoy his discomfiture. He then went on to criticize the Kremlin leader for the biggest blunder in the history of socialism. The Russian's ratings plummeted to single digits.

Now back to reality. Mr. Putin is savoring President Bush's predicament and piling on. His paranoid military had briefed him on the anti-missile system the U.S. wants to install in Poland and the Czech Republic as a deterrent to hostile nuclear-tipped Iranian missiles. From what his intelligence tells him, Iran is so far behind in producing a nuclear weapon, let alone one that can be miniaturized and fitted into the nose cone of a Shahab-4 missile, that the Americans must have an ulterior motive.

A copy of North Korea's No-Dong 2 missile, the latest Shahab-4, or Shooting Star, would have a range of about 1,500 kilometers (900 miles), which would threaten Israel, Jordan and all the Gulf countries, but not Europe.

Mr. Putin, after listening to his military and intelligence services, decided to rattle the Europeans by snarling at Mr. Bush. This could produce a little more daylight between Washington and its European allies. Given Mr. Bush's single-digit popularity ratings in Europe, Mr. Putin presumably concluded this is a propitious time to push the envelope with strident warnings about a new missile race, this time one the U.S. started.

At first blush it seemed like much ado about very little. The U.S. proposal to expand its missile defense shield to cover Europe entails locating 10 missile interceptors in Poland that would be linked to a new radar base in the Czech Republic. For Eastern European countries that are now NATO members, the U.S. missile plan seemed like additional guarantees against their former imperial masters in Moscow. Mr. Putin's new Russia is now flush with the income of oil and gas exports and many Eastern Europeans sense nostalgia in Moscow for what is known as its "near abroad."